How do you?

CoachTay · July 2013

How do you store your frozen breast milk? I've been freezing the bags flat, thinking I could stand them up in a plastic bin in the freezer... Didn't quite work out as I had hoped. I EP and am able to freeze 2 to 3 5oz bags per day. My freezer is getting a bit messy as my stash increases. Does anyone have any creative ways to store frozen breast milk?

tondraluv · July 2013

I bought the NUK breast milk holder. It says you can put 10 baggies in there but I can get about 20 in there. For my frozen stash I bought a plastic shoe container box & right now I have about 60 3 ounce baggies in it.

The NUK holder

tondraluv · July 2013

I forgot to say that once the breast milk is frozen, I place it on it's side in the plastic box.

Kate_C · July 2013

There is a thing online somewhere that shows you how to make a dispenser like tondra's by just cutting a slot in a paper bag. I couldn't get that to work, so I just stand them up in a shoe box after freezing flat.

RussianMommy · July 2013

Ice cube trays

OhSewCrafty · July 2013

I just freeze it flat (I can stack 4-5 unfrozen bags to let them freeze to save space) then stand them up in a basket from the dollar store like this. They're in date order so I can just file through them and take the oldest first.

ETA: Oh, and I should probably mention - we got a small chest freezer on Craig's List for about $100 to store breast milk and baby food long term. It makes life SO much easier, plus we can just resell it if we don't want it after the year.

snok83 · July 2013

I put my bags into a small gift bag and then stack them flat on each other until the bag is full. By doing this, I was able to store like 6 gift bags full on one shelf of my freezer. Somewhere I read you could cut a slot in the bottom of the gift bag to pull out the oldest bag. However, I found this didn't work for me. My bags stick together a bit when I freeze them flat so I found I couldn't pull it out so I stopped cutting the slot.

JSS1002 · July 2013

I devoted a whole drawer in my freezer (pull out on the bottom) to breast milk bags, and it worked like it would work in a shoebox. I was also going to suggest a shoebox.

CoachTay · July 2013

Thanks for all of the great suggestions ladies!

NicoleSB80 · July 2013

OhSewCrafty:
I just freeze it flat (I can stack 4-5 unfrozen bags to let them freeze to save space) then stand them up in a basket from the dollar store like this. They're in date order so I can just file through them and take the oldest first.

ETA: Oh, and I should probably mention - we got a small chest freezer on Craig's List for about $100 to store breast milk and baby food long term. It makes life SO much easier, plus we can just resell it if we don't want it after the year.

How do you get them so flat?!?! my are always bigger at the bottom.

FWIW, I store mine in Gladware - the biggest one holds about 20 bags. I date each back and put a post it on the front of the gladware with the date range contained inside.

When we got a new fridge a couple years ago we moved our old one to the garage for extra storage space. So that freezer has now become my BM holder. I should be able to freeze about 800oz in there when all is said and done. (I only have about 200 now).

ETA: Thinking yours are flat cause you are only freezing 2oz or so? I freeze 6 at a time as I SAH and will only be using the bags when I'm away from baby for a day or longer (one day I'll get a vaca) so we could then pull and plan on usually 3-4 bags in a 24hr period...

cheesecakerunner · July 2013

I put mine in a BPA-free ice cube tray, then in quart-sized freezer bags in a jumbo Ziploc bag. It takes up a bunch of room in our deep freeze, but we have the room to spare.

pinottoparenthood · July 2013

I freeze flat in BM storage bags. Every 1.5-2 weeks, I put all those bags in a giant ziplock freezer bag with the dates written on the outside. Then I can drop the big Zploc bags to the bottom of the freezer (we have a chest freezer) and use the big bags in order according to date. I also reuse the big ziplock bags... When I use all the milk bags out of one, I just cross out the old dates and use it again.

OhSewCrafty · July 2013

NicoleSB80:
OhSewCrafty:
I just freeze it flat (I can stack 4-5 unfrozen bags to let them freeze to save space) then stand them up in a basket from the dollar store like this. They're in date order so I can just file through them and take the oldest first.

ETA: Oh, and I should probably mention - we got a small chest freezer on Craig's List for about $100 to store breast milk and baby food long term. It makes life SO much easier, plus we can just resell it if we don't want it after the year.

How do you get them so flat?!?!   my are always bigger at the bottom.
FWIW, I store mine in Gladware - the biggest one holds about 20 bags. I date each back and put a post it on the front of the gladware with the date range contained inside.
When we got a new fridge a couple years ago we moved our old one to the garage for extra storage space.   So that freezer has now become my BM holder.    I should be able to freeze about 800oz in there when all is said and done. (I only have about 200 now).

ETA: Thinking yours are flat cause you are only freezing 2oz or so? I freeze 6 at a time as I SAH and will only be using the bags when I'm away from baby for a day or longer (one day I'll get a vaca) so we could then pull and plan on usually 3-4 bags in a 24hr period...

I store them in 3 ounce increments. Right now, she only takes 3 ounce bottles so one bag = one bottle. When she starts daycare she will need 3 bottles a day. If she still needs 3 ounces, that's 3 bags/bottles a day. If she needs 4 ounce bottles, I can send 4 bags = 12 ounces/3, 4 ounce bottles.

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